After a single, career-minded woman is left on her own to give birth to the child of a married man, she finds a new romantic chance in a cab driver. Meanwhile, the point-of-view of the newborn boy is narrated through voice-over.

Storyline

In 1978, in Broadway, the decadent and narcissist actress Madeline Ashton is performing Songbird, based on Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. Then she receives her rival Helen Sharp, who is an aspiring writer, and her fiancé Ernest Menville, who is a plastic surgeon, in her dressing-room. Soon Menville calls off his commitment with Helen and marries Madeline. Seven years later, Helen is obese in a psychiatric hospital and obsessed in seeking revenge on Madeline. In 1992, the marriage of Madeline and Menville is finished and he is no longer a surgeon but an alcoholic caretaker. Out of the blue, they are invited to a party where Helen will release her novel Forever Young and Madeline goes to a beauty shop. The owner gives a business card of the specialist in rejuvenation Lisle Von Rhuman to her. When the envious Madeline sees Helen thin in a perfect shape, she decides to seek out Lisle and buys a potion to become young again. Further, she advises that Madeline must take care of ...Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Did You Know?

Trivia

When Helen comes to the mansion to speak with Ernest, and tells him she has changed from the woman he once knew - telling him she can say the words "sexy" and "sex" - she has red lipstick on her top teeth the whole time. See more »

Goofs

When Madeline and Helen meet in Madeline's dressing room, they kiss one another on the cheek. Madeline leaves a large bright red lip print on Helen's upper cheek. In the next shot, the print has moved down toward her chin area. See more »

Quotes

[first lines]
Opening Man:
[leaving the theatre in the rain]
Can you believe that? A musical version of "Sweet Bird of Youth."Who are they kidding?
Opening Woman:
Thank God you wanted to leave...
Second Woman:
Can you believe Madeline Ashton? Talk about waking the dead.
Second Man:
I gotta get a drink...
[zoom in on discarded playbill featuring Madeline Ashton]
See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

User Reviews

We all want to stay beautiful and young; the desire that only gets stronger as we grow older and weaker. True, there's the pilates and avocado salads, but what if you could have it all just by taking a shot? You'd take it, I bet you would. I would. As the society of today is only getting more and more paranoid and fixated on the culture of youth, this movie's message should only get more important. We are not that far away from creating the potion of eternal youth, and surely we're far closer than we were in 1992 when the movie was made. And the questions posed by the makers, and even answered by them in the very next lines, should only be remembered fonder: what do we get if we erase a part of life, the death, from the process of life? What will really happen? Sure, this movie is a comedy: a black comedy of course, but still a comedy, not too be taken too seriously and surely not a motto to live your life by. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that the creators had a more significant message to portray, other than "don't shoot your friend in the stomach after drinking the potion or she'll be saying goodbye to bikinis forever". "Death Becomes Her" is one of those movies that guarantee great entertainment (but it's kind of a given with Streep, Hawn and Willis as the top three) and on top of it all, give you something to think about, even merely 17 years after it's been released.

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